Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Colonial GT

I’m super exhausted, having done The Colonial GT this past weekend, then getting sick and having two sick kids since Monday, no sleep, lots of puke and snot…Nurgle is visiting my house. Despite exhaustion I wanted to give a quick recap of the weekend, full reports to come when I’ve had a decent night’s sleep!

Sean and I drove down from his place Saturday morning, I bought two coffees (Sean told me that was weird, I didn’t care) and we got to the VFW…parking lot full of 40k geeks standing around with their armies and display boards and coffees (I was the only one with two) waiting. Soon we were called in, got set up, and got underway, on time, on schedule, with no issues.

I first played Rich Therkon’s Sisters of Battle. I had one of those bizarrely lucky first drops, where flamers scattered a long way to be in the exact right spot to flame the occupants of the rhino that Fateweaver shot at for kicks and exploded. On the drop I killed off his Seraphim and a whole unit of Battle Nuns, and he was on his back foot from the start. I pushed hard, killing all his troops, and following around his Stormraven full of Death Company (and a DC Dred!) with 3 units of Turboboosting Screamers for 3 turns preventing the occupants from getting out for a big win in the first game. Woot!

Second game was Chaos Marines, three full units of Nurgle Spawn, Screamers, two fighty Khorne lords. I lost the battle of attrition and was unable to keep his last troop unit from getting the Relic (the Primary mission) though I won the Secondary and Tertiary for a 13-9 loss.

Third game, and I cursed myself thinking, “Well, after a loss hopefully I’ll have a softer matchup…” and drew Tyranids. I turned a 10-wound Doom in to a Spawn, which was hilarious, and was able to focus on parts of the enemy army that came deep in to my area (where two of the three objectives were), wiped them out, then pushed in to contest his objective and get linebreaker, for a max-point victory (despite Fateweaver dying to his first wound from the Flyrant…sigh)

Second day I was near the top of the pack, on table 3 against a Necron list that I was confused by…only two Night Scythes, two Barges, 3 Spyders (but no Scarabs), Zahndrekh, Obyron, another Overlord (Scythe, MSS, Weave, Orb, Phase). A Big Warrior unit and two Big Immortal units. I got wrong wave, letting him start working on troops early, Nurglings did well tying things up, when the Screamers and Flamers came on his troops disappeared quickly too. This guy played super smart, using Obyron to deepstrike the Spyders deep in to my deploy. The game ended up going to 7, after we’d lost all our troops in turn 5. It came down to a unit of Screamers trying to kill off his Spyders to prevent him from getting Linebreaker so I could tie. He kept Zahndrekh alive by charging in to Nurglings, who had to pile in around him, preventing me from getting anything else in there to kill him. Brilliant play by him, and lucky Screamers for me got us a 10-10 draw.

Thinking that draw would knock me out of the running, I was surprised to find there must have been a lot of other small-point games, as I was on table 3 again, this time against the renowned Tony Kopach and his IG/SW (Primaris, 2 Blobs, 2 Manticore, 3 Vendetta, 2 Rune Priests, 5 Grey Hunters). He won the roll, had me go first, I got wrong wave…felt ugly. Then The Changeling worked his magic and kept me in it, as one of his Blobs failed their Ldr test and had to target the other blob. This bought me enough time to get Screamers and Flamers on the table, Nurglings got to tie up a blob, and things started going really well for me. Too well, I got complacent, and in the last turn I mindlessly assaulted the sole surviving blob and gave up FIVE kill points in one turn for a big loss. Well deserved win to Tony who was quick to take advantage of my mistakes, making none of his own.

I ended up 9th overall, which is pretty respectable. I had a great time, with no games that left me feeling grumpy. I have nothing but the highest praise for all my opponents…all of them really skilled, and fun to play with! A worthy sendoff for the old Daemons!

Chris and Company ran a tremendous tournament. Everything ran on time and went smoothly. Definitely an event I intend to return to! Thanks for the invite, Chris!